Comments (5)

Morava, I've been thinking about this some more, and I just don't understand why you would even use baking soda in this recipe as a leavening agent, when you've just doubled the baking powder called for in The Joy of Cooking "Custard Topped Spoon Bread," without changing any of the other ingredients/ratios, except to add flavorings. I use baking soda to counteract the acidity of buttermilk used in yeast breads. Perhaps the authors of The Joy of Cooking wanted the sour milk/buttermilk flavor, but also needed to balance its acidity? I'm just not that familiar with the way these ingredients play off each other in a dish like this. It's puzzling. ;o)

The vinegar in the recipe is there to sour the milk. It's a common trick you see in older cookbooks, for recipes similar to this one. Very typical of The Joy of Cooking. Modern cookbooks typically just have you use buttermilk.

Yes, morava, you're right. I've always made spoon bread with buttermilk, and now I realize that the acidity from the soured milk or buttermilk is necessary for the soda in this. I make mine the old-fashioned way, with no leavening agents at all. (It's practically against the law to put baking powder in spoon bread, where I come from.) I think the editors of The Joy of Cooking, when they published the "Custard Topped Spoon Bread" on which the recipe is based, must have figured that cooks would prefer to measure out chemical leavening agents rather than to separate the eggs and beat the whites, which is the traditional way of making spoon bread. Interestingly, the predecessor version of this recipe, in the 1943 edition, does not include any baking soda or buttermilk (or soured milk). In that edition, there are two different recipes, one which calls for buttermilk and soda; the other calls for regular milk and baking powder, but no soda, and has you pour milk, not cream, over it. ;o)